


Mergence

by MsBarrows



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Dark fic, Death References, Descent into Madness, Gen, Monophobia, Nightmares, Not Really Character Death, Psychological Horror, dependancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 07:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsBarrows/pseuds/MsBarrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Dragon Age Reverse Big Bang, to accompany an artwork by Hawkeward (hawkeward.tumblr.com).</p><p>A dark look at Anders' and Justice's relationship, and Anders' increasing dependence on him and union with him, seen in glimpses from shortly after their merging in Amaranthine to post-DA2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hawkeward](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawkeward/gifts).



Anders staggered through the forest, barely able to see through his tears, retching whenever he started to remember, though there was nothing left in his stomach to bring up. He'd killed them, killed _all_ of them. Not just a simple zap-you're-dead bolt of lightning or fairly instant icy death either, but horribly, horrendously dead, their torn flesh reeking as it sizzled from the heat of the fire magic that had finished any who'd survived the storm of magic that had destroyed them, the stench of broken bowels and emptied bladders underlying it all.

He missed his footing at the top of a slope, tumbled down it, air woofing out of him as he bounced painfully off dirt and rocks and rolled through a scrubby patch of brush before ending with a splash in a stream of water, still icy cold with spring runoff. The cold at least roused him, shocking him out of his hysteria. He pushed himself to hands and knees, sputtering, then drew a deep breath and just crouched there, shivering and sobbing.

Something stirred deep inside him. The wordless sense of Justice's presence, Justice's confusion over his reaction to what he – they – had done, in escaping Rolan and the templars with whom he'd sought to entrap Anders. Justice's certainty that what they had done had been _right_ , regardless of how ugly the aftermath might have been. What did it matter how the templars had died, so long as they were no longer able to threaten or torment mages?

He retched again, weakly, then forced himself to _not think of it_ , to sit back on his heels and scoop up handfuls of the cold water to splash over his face, washing away the worst of the tears and snot and trails of vomit.

He struggled out of his pack, tossing it to shore, then stripped off his heavy over-robe, dunking it into the stream and swirling it around to clean it as best he could. He rose on unsteady legs afterwards, wringing the robe out before making his way some distance upstream, carrying his pack and the bundle of wet fabric in one hand, his staff held in the other and used much like the walking-stick it resembled to help keep his balance. Only once he began to feel he could walk no further, his feet like blocks of ice from wading through the cold stream, did he finally step out of it and onto the bank. He spread out the robe over a boulder to dry before crouching down to drink his fill of water; better he have something in his stomach if his nausea returned.

For a long moment he just crouched there, enjoying the feel of the warm sun on his water-chilled skin, still not-thinking about what had happened, but instead thinking about what had to happen now. Running; escaping again; _leaving_. A painful thought; he'd thought he was done with leaving places, with leaving behind people he'd liked.

North-west, he decided. He'd have to avoid Amaranthine – his face was known there – but if he went north-west, there were all sorts of little fishing villages along the coast, and surely there must be smugglers working out of some of them. If all else failed, he had at least a rudimentary knowledge of how to sail one of the little one-man sailing boats that were common on Lake Calenhad, and doubtless in use along the coast as well. The Waking Sea wasn't all _that_ wide; he could head north to the Free Marches, perhaps.

He took inventory then, of the few belongings he still had. His over-robe, looking rather the worse for wear as it dried in the sun, its blue-and-grey colour and griffon heraldry too recognizable in any case. He'd need to get rid of it, and soon. Thankfully, unlike the under-robe of a Circle Mage's robes, the garments worn under a Grey Warden robe would pass as regular clothing – a long loose shirt of unbleached linen, and leggings that had started out dyed black but faded over many washings to more of a charcoal grey colour. Apart from that he had his staff, and the contents of his pack – a few changes of undergarments, some trail rations, a notebook, a handful of coins, and his bedroll.

He'd ran with less, in the past.

He would rest, at least briefly, he decided, and then move on.

* * *

_He dreamed._

_He dreamed and knew it was a dream, knew he was in the Fade as he walked along a forest path. There was someone walking beside him, someone he could not see. He would hear their voice but not their words, and look that way and see only trees, leaves, light. He felt so alone, despite the feeling of being accompanied._

_He knew before it came in sight that there was a clearing ahead, a clearing where the unseen person would suggest they stop for the night, though they could easily have kept travelling for another hour or two. He didn't want to stop there. He wished to keep going. He stopped walking, only to find he was no longer on the path, but in the centre of the clearing, where he hadn't meant to stop. He turned around, looking for the person, wanting to say that no, he would not stop here, he wished to continue on, but there was no one there to say this to. So he turned his face up to the clear blue sky and shouted his denial instead, startling silent the songbirds in the nearby trees. When he turned to leave the path onwards was gone. He turned, and turned again, not able even to find the path by which he'd entered the clearing; just trees, leaves, light, in any direction he looked._

_A person was there, standing close to him, when he turned around again, someone dressed in Grey Warden blues. Rolan, he thought in disgusted recognition and growing dread, and turned to walk away from him, but the trees were right there behind him, no room to move away. He began walking around the edge of the clearing, feeling more and more desperate as he looked for a way out, Rolan trailing alongside him, visible now as he – it_ must _have been Rolan – had not been visible earlier. Irritated, he turned to shout at Rolan, to drive him away, only to see they were no longer alone. Templars; templars in the clearing, walking toward him, swords already drawn, eyes glinting in the darkness and shadow behind narrow helmet slits. Rolan's face was split by a grin, not a cheerful one, but one of triumph._

" _Abomination. Even the Grey Wardens won't protect you any longer."_

_He wanted to wake up. He didn't want to re-live what happened next, what he_ knew _had happened. His panicked attempts at spells, the coarse laughter of the templars as they silenced him and closed in, his desperate wish for help, their shouts of sudden fear the last thing he heard over a roaring in his ears... their bodies, when he woke to himself some time later, lying scattered around the clearing, the torn vegetation of the clearing smoking with scorch marks and glittering with ice, the drops of blood like scattered jewels, wealth beyond measure that once stolen could never be returned._

_It was worse, in the dream, the bodies not just torn and mangled by the force of magic that had killed them, but torn apart, eviscerated, mangled and mutilated, throats torn open, looking more like his memories of darkspawn brought down by the Commander's mabari than the aftermath of any purely human attack._

* * *

Anders started awake, heart pounding wildly in his chest. He felt Justice's questioning and worried presence, and sent soothing thoughts toward the spirit. It had just been a dream, a nightmare, no current and present danger. He was safe, or at least as safe as he could be until someone found the dead templars and warden, and a manhunt was started.

He rose unsteadily to his feet, ignoring the aches of his body. The stream provided more water, his pack a trail ration made of roasted grains mixed with nuts, dried fruit and honey. He stood a moment, hesitating over the robe, now no worse then damp, then reluctantly picked it up and drew it on. The night would be cold, and even damp it would help him to keep warm. And best, perhaps, that when he did get rid of it, it was somewhere far from here and well-hidden, not left out for anyone to trip over and wonder about the provenance of.

North-west, he reminded himself, and studied the night sky overhead before setting out, picking his way slowly through the darkened forest. North-west, and then north across the Waking Sea, to freedom. He was glad that in this escape he at least had some form of companionship, the weight of Justice stirring in the back of his mind. Never alone again; that had been their covenant.


	2. Act 1

Anders had learned to live with the nightmares of that escape, no worse than the ones he'd had as a Grey Warden whenever darkspawn were near, no worse than the ones he'd been having even before becoming a Grey Warden. Nights when he slept soundly had always been rare, even before the Commander had conscripted him, and his time as a Grey Warden and the circumstances of his fleeing the order merely added to his stock of them. As did living in Darktown, which at times revealed scenes and events that were almost as nightmarish as anything in his own head.

Which didn't stop him from rather desperately wishing he was back in Darktown right now, in the comparative safety of his clinic, instead of here in the Deep Roads accompanying the Tethras brothers and Hawke and their merry little expedition into the depths. He should have told Hawke _no_ , he found himself thinking, and wished once again that he had, but Hawke was persuasive and his will around Hawke was weakened by his attraction to the warrior, and so he'd said yes when Hawke asked him to come along.

A fact he regretted bitterly now, the Deep Roads having re-awakened every nightmare he'd ever had about small dark spaces and confinement. Not to mention all the jolly dreams featuring darkspawn, which it turned out were in fact still present here, despite the myth that following a Blight they'd be largely absent. He should have known that would prove to be incorrect. Okay, perhaps there weren't as _many_ of them as there might otherwise have been, but as far as he was concerned any darkspawn was too many.

The dragon, at least, had been a surprise. Though far from a welcome one, and certainly an overly exciting one, and mostly its presence in the depths left him wondering uneasily what else might be lurking down here. His growing unease and – okay, yes, _fear_ \- meant that Justice was roused too, the feel of the spirit's presence very much with him as they continued deeper into the tunnels. Which was, he supposed, better than having to deal with travelling the Deep Roads without the spirit's silent support, but meant he was on edge all the time, having to constantly explain things to the spirit and convince him that, no, it was no injustice for Sandal to be carrying the pack that held all of Bodahn's stock while the merchant himself walked unencumbered, as well as other vagaries of human and dwarven behaviour.

The fact that Hawke had brought along that damned mage-hating elf wasn't helping matters either. What did Hawke want a second warrior along for anyway?

He had some unhappy suspicions about that, too, which wasn't helping his mood any.

He was relieved when they finally stopped for the night, making camp in a small side room off of the main tunnel that was a near-twin of every other small side room they'd camped in over the weeks of this interminable trip. The ancient dwarves were nothing if not consistent in their architecture, he thought with some minor amusement as he moved to the corner of the room that was "his", as the corresponding corner had become his in every camp they'd made that was more-or-less this same floor plan. The others automatically scattered to their own preferred places, Hawke and Fenris to one side of the door, the expedition guards to the other, Bodahn and Sandal claiming the corner beyond the guards, Varric and Bartrand still arguing quietly together even as they moved to set up their usual shared camp in a different corner of the room.

He spread out his own bedroll, more out of habit than any intention of using it, then settled down with his back wedged into the corner of the room, his pillow in his lap, providing him both a certain degree of comfort and a surface on which to brace his journal. A wisp hovering over his shoulder provided him light, as he emptied his mind and let Justice come more to the forefront of his thoughts, considering mages, and the injustice of their lack of freedom. After a while he lifted his pen, dipped it, and began to write.

Hawke, pacing the room, stopped nearby after a while. "Not sleeping again?"

He shook his head. "Later, perhaps. I don't need much sleep." He ignored the quiet snort from Fenris, sitting by the door and watching Hawke with a look Anders could only think of as _hungry_. Hawke stood there a moment longer, as if about to say something else, then sighed and walked on, leaving Anders to himself.

The room was filled with the faint sounds of others sleeping, only two of the guard and Fenris still awake and on watch, before Anders finally sighed, setting aside his quill and rubbing at eyes that felt dry and sore from lack of sleep. He didn't _want_ to sleep, and his words to Hawke had been no lie; between being a Grey Warden and Justice's presence, he could go several days without real sleep if he had to. But doing so was not wise; better for his health, both physical and mental, if he got at least a little real sleep every night, as little as he liked doing so, especially here where the nightmares seemed almost to lie in wait for him.

He didn't bother lying down, preferring the secure feeling of having good solid stone at his back, instead merely moving his journal, ink well and pen well off to one side, then curled up with his arms around up-raised knees, his head resting on the pillow balanced on top of them, hoping to sleep dreamlessly for once and knowing that hope was fruitless as long as he remained in the Deep Roads.

* * *

_He dreamed._

_He dreamed and knew it was a dream, a nightmare he was long-familiar with, knew he was in the Fade as he walked along a narrow forest path. There was someone walking to either side of him, people he could not see. He would hear their voices but not their words. He would turn, trying to look their way, and see only trees, falling leaves, the fading light._

_He knew before it came in sight that there was a clearing ahead, a clearing where one of the unseen people would suggest they stop for the night, though they could easily have kept travelling for another hour or two. He didn't want to stop there. He didn't want to reach that clearing. He stopped walking, only to find he was no longer on the path, but in the centre of the clearing anyway, where he hadn't meant to be. He turned around, looking for the way out, but the path onwards was gone, the path by which he'd arrived equally missing. He shouted, startling a flock of birds out of the nearby trees, swirling around him like the falling wind-blown leaves. He turned, and turned again, seeing just trees, falling leaves, fading light, a dark hole in the earth whose presence filled him with dread. There was something in the hole, watching him, a feeling in his head as if its thoughts skittered through his mind the way a nest of roaches, disturbed, might flee the light_

_A person was there when he turned again, dressed in Grey Warden blues. Rolan, he thought in disgust and dread, and turned to find another figure on the other side of him, watching silently. Justice, who he acknowledged with a nod, then walked past him, walking around the edge of the clearing, feeling more and more desperate as he looked for a way out, Rolan trailing alongside him, Justice merely standing and watching, silent. Irritated, he turned to shout at Rolan, to drive him away, only to see they were no longer alone. Templars; templars in the clearing, walking toward him, swords drawn, eyes glinting in the darkness behind narrow helmet slits. Rolan's face was split by a wide grin of triumph._

" _Abomination. Even the Grey Wardens won't protect you any longer," Rolan grated out. "They've given up on you."_

_He turned to walk away from them all, but there were more people right behind him, preventing him from going that direction; Grey Wardens, wearing their blues, the faces vaguely familiar to him, almost recognizable, but looking at him with such cold, cold eyes, no friendship or help for him there._

_He wanted to wake up. He didn't want to re-live what happened next, what had happened so many times now. His panicked attempts to push past the wardens, their unmoving enmity that kept him there, ignoring his pleas to let him by, to let him go. His panicked attempts at spells as templar gauntlets closed bruisingly around his arms, dragging him back toward the centre of the clearing, the coarse laughter of the templars as they silenced him and closed in, his terrified cry for help, their shouts of sudden fear the last thing he heard over a roaring in his ears. The bodies, when he woke to himself some time later, lying scattered around the clearing, wardens and templars tumbled together among the fallen leaves like more of autumn's detritus. The air was smoky, the bodies glittering with ice and drops of blood like scattered jewels, wealth beyond measure that once stolen could never be returned. Justice stood among the carnage, the only untouched thing, still watching, standing guard with his hands closed around the haft of a spiked maul almost as tall as the spirit himself._

_It was worse, in the dream, the bodies not just torn and mangled by the force of magic that had killed them, but torn apart, eviscerated, mangled and mutilated, throats torn open. His hands were sticky, his nostrils filled with the stench of burnt flesh and broken bowels, his mouth filled with the coppery taste of blood. He would have screamed if he could, felt it welling up in his chest..._

* * *

Anders jerked awake, heart pounding, gasping in breath for a shout he only just managed to prevent himself from actually making. He sat there shivering in after-reaction for some time, head pressed to the pillow on his knees.

The sound of movement made him glance up. Just the expedition guards moving around, two of them lying down while two more of them settled down to sit beside the door, taking their turn at watch. Hawke was awake now, Fenris lying down asleep.

No, not asleep Anders realized, seeing the glint of half-closed eyes. Watching him. He stared coldly back for a long moment, then lowered his head, making a show of returning to sleep. Though he didn't sleep, not _real_ sleep, just slipping in and out of wakefulness, on the edge of sleep but never quite returning fully into it, until finally the interminable night – or what they were choosing to call night, having nothing to prove it one way or the other except the word of the dwarves that it was time for sleep – coming at last to an end, people stirring and rising to begin another day of travel.

He found himself wondering if they'd know it if they began somehow wandering in circles, passing through the same sections of tunnels and staying in the same rooms over and over again. Or would they just keep going, on and on, until they ran out of supplies or died to darkspawn or reached some other ending, here in the depths?

Not a cheerful thought. But then he was unlikely to feel any cheerfulness at all, until they were out of here again. He just hoped it was over soon, and was thankful he had Justice's company to help him get through it.


	3. Act 2

"I... I need some time alone to think," Anders told Hawke, trying not to show the panic he felt.

"All right. I'll see you later," Hawke said, nodded farewell, and turned away, falling into step beside Aveline, the two laughing together about something even before they were out of sight.

Anders stood there for some time, stomach curdling with his distress, before finally turning away and beginning to make his way back to his Darktown clinic. He'd not thought that going into the Fade to rescue Feynriel would be _easy_... but he had never suspected just how difficult it would turn out to be. Not because of Hawke, or Feynriel, or even the demons they'd encountered there, but because of Justice.

He'd become used to sharing his body and mind with the spirit, accustomed to the commentary Justice made on his actions and choices, sometimes in words and sometimes merely in feelings of approval, disapproval, confusion. He'd become dependant on the spirit's companionship and support. He'd become comfortable with those times when he allowed Justice to move more to the forefront, when they co-operated on writing their manifesto, or the deeper partnership when Justice's powers sustained him through some particularly difficult spell or extended battle.

A partnership that had begun to have its moment of strain lately, such as when Justice had a few weeks before slain the girl Ella for no crime but having been made the victim of a group of templars. Justice saw only that she'd had the power to protect herself and decided not to use it; from his point of view, her not using her power to prevent herself from being made Tranquil had meant she was co-operating with the templars; that she was _participating_ in the injustice, not merely its proposed victim. Justice hadn't understood the very human emotions and motivations that had rendered her incapable of defending herself; only the injustice of the outcome

Anders had felt sick for days afterwards, and felt at times that trying to explain human motives, human fears and frailties to the spirit was like talking to a lump of stone. He'd been reduced to tears of frustration, because of Justice's inability to feel empathy for any living, thinking creature except Anders. And what Justice felt when Anders felt strong emotions... well, it wasn't really _empathy_ , either, was it? Spirits didn't really feel or understand emotion, which is why Anders' own frustrations or anger or other strong feelings were so deeply unsettling to the spirit in turn; they were things Justice had no way of understanding, no experience with other than as part of Anders.

Anders had thought they'd found a balance, with himself carefully suppressing a lot of his own urges and desires – for friendship, for enjoyment, for rest and relaxation, so many, _many_ things – in order to satisfy Justice's need for a stable environment, without the confusing turmoil of Anders' emotions throwing them both off balance.

But in the Fade... in the Fade, when they'd gone in to help Feynriel, it had suddenly been _Justice_ who was the one in control of their joint being, Anders the one relegated to merely sitting back and watching as Justice made the decisions.

It shouldn't have been that distressing for him, he kept telling himself. They'd been sharing his self for years now. It wasn't the first time Justice had been the one in control. And yet... and yet, except for a scant handful of times, it had always been _his choice_ that had let Justice to the fore, not just Justice taking the lead as if by right, and refusing to give it up. More, it had usually been in circumstances where he'd not been _aware_ of what Justice had done while his own self was suppressed. This time had been _different_.

Not being in control, being a mere passenger in his own being – even if only in the Fade, technically nothing worse than a dream, not in the reality of his own body – had been deeply distressing. His fears of confinement, of being helpless, had surged to the fore, and been ruthlessly ignored by Justice, no attention paid to his silent pleas to have control returned to him.

No, not _ruthlessly_ , he corrected himself. A creature that felt no real emotions could not be ruthless. Coldly logical, perhaps; his emotions, no matter how powerful, had been of no consequence to Justice, merely another potential distraction. Something to be ignored.

And that... made him even more uneasy. He'd thought of them as equal partners, though with himself the one in control, it being _his_ body after all, his mind that they shared. Now he began to wonder if that was true or not. Was he the one in control, or was Justice merely allowing him to believe so? Content to ride along, apart from the thankfully rare times when Justice decided to act on his own behalf.

He wondered, too, if Justice could have remained behind in the Fade, once they'd been brought there by Marethari's spell. He wasn't entirely sure he'd have _wanted_ Justice to remain behind, leaving him once again alone, but... why hadn't it come up at all? Why hadn't Justice wanted to stay there, returning to his previous life – if what a spirit in the Fade had could be called a life – with others of his kind?

Anders wondered, just a little, what separation from those other spirits was doing to Justice, who had now revealed his dark side of Vengeance, a side that Anders sometimes worried might have been caused by their merging, and sometimes feared had always been there, or had been caused by Justice's separation from others of his kind. For what _was_ Justice, when he was not paired with Mercy, or Kindness, or other ameliorating spirits?

He tossed and turned on his cot for some time, unable to sleep, mind churning with worries. Fears made only worse by the current feeling of _absence_ where Justice usually nestled on the edge of his consciousness, the spirit seemingly having withdrawn in some way from him. He wasn't sure if he was more relieved by that... or further frightened.

* * *

_He dreamed._

_He dreamed and knew it for a long-familiar nightmare. Knew he was back in the Fade as he walked along a narrow path through a burnt-off forest. There was an armoured figure ahead of him that he could see, a feeling of presence behind him that he was unable to turn and look at. He would hear the voice but not the words of whomever followed behind, but when he looked that way he could see only the broken-off burnt stubs of trees, drifts of smoke, the fast-fading light, the darkness of smoke or clouds or night gathering in behind them._

_He knew before it came in sight that there was a clearing ahead, a clearing where they would stop and terrible things would happen. He didn't want to stop there. He didn't want to reach that clearing. But he had no choice but to keep following the figure ahead of him, that silent armoured figure that never looked anywhere but straight ahead as it paced along though the burnt waste. He stopped walking abruptly, only to find he was no longer on the path, but in the centre of the clearing anyway, where he hadn't meant to be. He turned around, looking for the way out, but there were no paths away, only tumbles of burnt logs and stubs of broken trees. He shouted, startling a flock of carrion birds that swirled in flight around him. He turned, and turned again, seeing just broken trees, burnt logs, carrion birds, drifts of smoke, a dark hole in the earth whose presence filled him with dread. There was something in the hole, watching him, hungering to possess him._

" _Abomination. Even the Grey Wardens won't protect you any longer," a guttural voice said._

_He wasn't sure if it was the armoured figure who had spoken, or the unnamed, unseen presence at his back, or whatever lurked in the darkness of the hole. He turned, and turned again, seeing that what he'd thought were more tumbled logs scattered about the clearing were bodies, some in templar armour and some in Grey Warden blues and some in the robes of mages. He picked out familiar faces among the dead, horrified to see them here; Sigrun's skull-like tattoos rendered even more skull-like by the stretch of dead flesh over the bones beneath, Nathaniel's face even more pale, bloodless and blued in death. Velanna, her flesh wrapped and pierced by the sharp branching roots of her own magic, thorny canes bracketing her face as if mirroring the thorny lines of ink that marked it._

_He wanted to wake up. He didn't want to re-live what happened next, what had happened so many times now, the bodies stirring, rising, possessed undead that wanted him to join them in their unnatural unlife. His frantic attempts at spells as gauntlets closed bruisingly around his naked arms, arms clasped around his waist and pulled him back hard against an armour-clad body, hands closed around ankles and knees and forced his legs apart. He screamed in terror, begging for Justice's help, a booming angry voice the last sound he heard over the roaring in his ears as panic overwhelmed him. The bodies, when he woke to himself some time later, lay scattered around the clearing, in heaps, in drifts, more than had been there before, and all glittering with frost and ice, and drops of blood like scattered jewels. His hands were sticky with their blood, his nostrils filled with the smell of it, his mouth filled with the taste, as he rocked back and forth, sobbing out his fear and anguish._

_Carrion birds wheeled around overhead again, the pall of smoke drifting in to hide the worst of the destruction. He found himself on his feet, hands unstained, mouth empty, Justice's arms wrapped securely around him, steadying, supporting him. He lowered his head to the armoured shoulder, closing his eyes within the dream, at last feeling safe as the dream faded away, secure within the circle of Justice's protection._


	4. Act 3

It had been a shock, seeing Nathaniel again. Seeing him; _speaking_ to him; knowing he was alive. Intellectually he'd known there was no real reason to think the man dead, and yet it had still been such a shock to be told by Hawke that Nathaniel's sister Delilah was _here_ , in Kirkwall, and had hired Hawke to return to the Deep Roads in search of her missing brother.

Anders had said six years ago that there was nothing that could bring him to return to the Deep Roads again; apparently he'd been wrong. Thankfully the trip had been nowhere near as lengthy as Hawke's original expedition, lasting mere weeks instead of months on end. The whole thing had felt unreal to him, like an extended dream, thankfully without the nightmarish overtones of their previous trip.

The moment when he'd seen Nathaniel – when Nathaniel had seen _him_ – it had come back to him with a rush, the memories of how much he'd enjoyed his first few months among the wardens. He'd felt like he was flying, wanting to grin like an idiot as Nathaniel and he exchanged a little banter as easily as if they'd last seen each other the day before, not seven years ago. Only his now long-standing habit of smothering emotion had kept him acting at all calmly.

He missed it; missed _them_ , the other Grey Wardens, a group not unlike and yet entirely unlike Hawke's group of companions. A group among whom he'd been accepted, been a valued and protected member, had had friends, _real_ friends he could count on, friends he'd hoped to remain among for the rest of his admittedly shortened life.

If only the Commander hadn't left.

If only Rolan hadn't come.

_If only_ changed nothing. As painful as it was to accept, he could not go back to that time, only forward from where he was now.

The pair of them had no time to talk, really, not without being overheard by everyone. They exchanged only a few strained words on the way back, Nathaniel being carefully neutral, though Anders could see the hurt in his eyes. We thought you dead, he'd said quietly at one point.

Better, perhaps, if it had remained that way, and yet Anders could not help being glad for even those few days of being in the presence of a brother again; a brother by choice, if not by blood, a brother too long estranged for there to be the same old comfort between them. It had been hard, not opening up and talking to Nathaniel, not telling him everything that had happened since the day Anders had been sent out on patrol with Rolan.

He'd felt Justice's uneasiness at Nathaniel's presence, remembered how close the two had once been. Well. Perhaps _close_ was not the right word for it, but there'd been a relationship of some kind there, if not friendship than something at least as close to it as the spirit could come. He still wondered, sometimes, why it was to him that Justice had turned as Kristoff's body became increasingly unusable, why it hadn't been Nathaniel that had joined with the spirit.

Perhaps it was Anders' own need for companionship, his desire to never be alone again, that had drawn the spirit to him. Perhaps it had been a conscious choice by Justice, to spare Nathaniel and possess Anders instead.

It was only later that he thought about the way he'd phrased that to himself – _sparing_ Nathaniel – and felt another stir of uneasiness over his partnership with the spirit. An uneasiness quickly suppressed, as he suppressed almost all extraneous emotion now.

* * *

_He dreamed._

_He dreamed and knew it for a long-familiar nightmare. Knew he was back in the Fade as he walked along a narrow path through a burnt-off forest. There was a feeling of presence behind him that he was unable to turn and look at, his heavy armour and slit-faced helmet making it difficult to turn very far to try and see. He could hear the voice but not the words of whomever followed, and when he looked around he could see only drifts of smoke, the fast-fading light, the wheeling carrion birds and shattered standards rising above the smoke._

_He knew before it came in sight that there was a clearing ahead, a clearing where terrible things would happen. He didn't want to reach that clearing. He didn't want to stop there. But he had no choice but to continue walking, a silent armoured figure that never looked anywhere but straight ahead as it paced along though the burnt waste. He stopped walking abruptly, no longer on the path but in the centre of the clearing already, where he hadn't wanted to be. He turned around, looking for whomever had followed behind him, but there was no one there. He shouted, startling a flock of carrion birds up off the tumbled mounds that surrounded him, so that they swirled in flight around him, their cries filling the air as they rose and disappeared among the dark clouds of smoke that covered the sky. He turned, and turned again, seeing just piles of bodies, broken standards, drifts of smoke, a dark hole in the earth whose presence filled him with dread though there was nothing there._

" _Abomination. There is nothing to protect you any longer," a guttural voice said, a grating voice, worse than the voice of a talking darkspawn, with a horrible bubbling quality that made him picture a rotting throat filled with clotted blood as the only possible source of such a sound._

_He turned, and turned again, looking for the source of the voice among the tumbled bodies, some in templar armour and some in Grey Warden blues and some in the robes of mages, the clothing of mundanes, the ruined remnants of armour that darkspawn wore. The fleshy protuberances of a darkspawn nest were threaded under and over and through the sprawled bodies. He picked out familiar faces among the dead, horrified to see them here; Sigrun's skull-like tattoos rendered even more skull-like by the taut stretch of dead flesh over the bones beneath, Aveline's face even more pale, bloodless and blued in death, freckles stark points of darkness against her skin. Fenris, flesh already darkening with rot and only made recognizable by the branching white tattoos still etched in his flesh._

_He wanted to wake up. He didn't want to re-live what happened next, what had happened so many times now, the bodies stirring, rising, possessed undead that wanted him to join them in their unnatural unlife. His frantic struggles as hands caught at him, catching and losing grips on his armoured flesh, impeding him but unable to hold him. And than a slender form rising abruptly before him, a fist glowing blue as it plunged into his chest as if the heavy breastplate that protected him wasn't even there._

_He screamed in pain, begging for Justice's help, a booming angry voice the last sound he heard over the roaring in his ears as panic overwhelmed him. The bodies, when he woke to himself some time later, lay scattered around the clearing, in heaps, in drifts, in hillocks, more than had been there before, and all glittering with front and coated in ice, dotted with glittering drops of blood, the closest of them torn into almost unrecognizable fragments by the force of the magic that had defended him. He clenched gauntleted hands, barely noticing the spiked maul that hung forgotten from one hand, its weight resting on the blood-soaked ground. His nostrils were filled with the stench of broken bowels, his mouth filled with the taste of bile and tears, as he retched and cried out in sorrow, in anger, in fear, in despair and loneliness._

_Carrion birds wheeled around him, settling on the bodies, hiding them away under a coverlet of iridescent dark feathers, a pall of smoke drifting in to hide the worst of the destruction. He felt Justice's presence, and took strength from the knowledge that he was not alone; that he would never be alone again. That Justice was always with him, supporting him, shielding him. Hands unfisted; he sighed, closing his eyes, feeling the layers of armour that encased him, that kept him safely separate from all around him._


	5. Epilogue

He had expected Hawke to kill him. He had expected his life to end, there in Lowtown, under a sky lit red by what he and Justice had done.

He had never seen Hawke so angry before. No point in telling Hawke that it had been no choice of his own; that it must have happened during one of his increasingly frequent blackouts, those times when it was no longer he in control, but his other half, his constant companion, his spirit, his demon. Justice.

_Vengeance._

Justice.

He walked away from Kirkwall with even less in his hands than he'd had when he came, only the clothes on his back, the staff in his hand. He walked because he might as well keep moving, until his death caught up with him. He walked, because it was something to do. Something he knew how to do. Something he was still allowed to do.

* * *

_He dreamed, and knew he was dreaming, though he no longer cared._

_He was at least not alone, as he crossed the endless ruined wasteland, the battlefield full of tumbled bodies. Templars, mages, Grey Wardens, elves from the alienage, dwarves, slavers, qunari, guardsmen, sailors, dockworkers, nobles and the desperate poor, men, women, children... faces he knew and faces he didn't, in every stage from freshly dead, still frozen in the horrified expression of their moment of death, to rotted beyond any hope of recognition._

_He walked a path between them, dark feathers detaching from his shoulders, swirling around him like the flight of carrion birds, far more graceful than the crows and ravens that launched clumsily into the air as he walked by, too well-fed to fly properly. There was smoke darkening the sky overhead, and from somewhere came the crackle of flames, but no fires were visible. He listened to the cries of the birds as they soared and swooped and circled, settling back on the corpses in his wake like a mantle of iridescent black feathers. Piles of bodies, drifts, hillocks, mountains, shattered standards rising here and there, the symbols on them changeable, obscure, unknown, alternatively hidden and revealed by the roil of smoke, of fog, of feathers._

_He turned, and turned again. Here was the corpse of a dwarf, glazed eyes looking oddly startled in their nest of bright red hair, nose almost as red from years of imbibing, the silent breeze ruffling short-cropped hair and long-bristled chin, so that for a moment Anders thought he yet breathed. There a long dark-skinned leg, graceful even in death, sticking out from under a pile of rotting darkspawn, sheathed to the thigh in buckled brown leather._

_There was Velanna, sprawled face down, Nathaniel's body draped on its back over top of her as if he'd sought to protect the elf, broken bow trailing from one gloved hand, the glow of the orange-red sky reflecting off the silver-and-blue of his breastplate like distant fires._

_Anders stopped, in a clear spot, blinked, seeing no path onwards, knowing if he turned there would be none behind him either. He reached up, lifting off the heavy helmet that obscured his vision. He held it in one massive, rough-skinned and scaly hand, gently brushed splashes of blood and specks of ash from the dented metal, fingers brushing gently over the surface of it, his touch feather-light._

_He could see his reflection in it, as if in a distorted mirror. A thought sufficed to make the surface flatter, smoother. Glowing blue eyes and sunken cheeks looked back at him. Kristoff's face... no, his own. No, some other face that he had never seen before, the face of a spirit, not a man. But still_ his _face._

_He turned, slowly, the helmet forgotten, and turned again. There was Fenris, sprawled face down, Sebastian's body draped on its back over top of him as if he'd sought to protect the elf, broken bow trailing from one gloved hand, the glow of the orange-red sky reflecting off the white-and-gold of his breastplate like distant fire._

_Here was the corpse of a dwarf, eyes shut, mouth silent, hands empty of pen, the breezes ruffling through his clothing and the hair on his chest, so that for a moment Anders thought he yet breathed. There a long pale-skinned leg, graceful even in death, sticking out from under a pile of broken wood and mirrored glass, the bare sole surprisingly clean, where it showed from underneath the coverings of embossed brown leather and tabard of silvery chain mail._

_He turned, and turned again, alone with his dead and yet never alone._


End file.
